Method to establish high level of redundancy, fault tolerance and performance in a raid system without using parity and mirroring

ABSTRACT

An apparatus comprising a logically contiguous group of at least two drives, a loop and a compression/decompression circuit. Each of the drives comprises (i) a first region configured to store compressed data of a previous drive and (ii) a second region configured to store uncompressed data of the drive. The loop may be connected to the next drive in the logically contiguous group. The compression/decompression circuit may be configured to compress and decompress the data stored on each of the drives.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present application may relate to co-pending application Ser. No. 12/732,841, filed Mar. 26, 2010, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to storage of data generally and, more particularly, to a method and/or apparatus for implementing a high level of redundancy, fault tolerance and performance in a RAID system without using parity and mirroring.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Conventional approaches used in RAID (redundant array of inexpensive drives) storage systems are primarily based on either an XOR function (parity calculations) or a mirror function to obtain redundancy and provide fault-tolerance. In RAID 1 and RAID 10 technologies, the drives are mirrored to obtain redundancy. Every time a new write occurs on the media, the entire data needs to be replicated and written onto both a data drive and a corresponding mirrored drive.

Referring to FIG. 1, a RAID 10 approach is shown. The drive DISK0 is shown mirrored to the drive DISK1. The drive DISK2 is shown mirrored to the drive DISK3. RAID 1 and RAID 10 approaches involve mirroring the complete contents of one drive to another drive. If there are two drives configured as RAID 1, where each drive has a capacity C GB, then the total capacity of the RAID group would be C GB (i.e., not the total capacity of both drives of 2C GB). Hence, the overall storage capacity of a RAID 1 or RAID 10 is 50% of the total capacity of all of the drives in the RAID 1 or RAID 10 configuration.

Referring to FIG. 2, a RAID 4 and a RAID 5 approach are shown. A number of drives DISK0, DISK1, DISK2 and DISK3 are shown. In RAID 4 and RAID 5, the data blocks are striped across a number of the drives DISK0-DISK3 of the RAID group. In the RAID 4 configuration shown, the drives DISK0, DISK1 and DISK2 store data. The parity block is stored in a dedicated drive (i.e., shown as the drive DISK3). In a RAID 5, the parity is distributed across all the drives DISK0-DISK4 in the RAID group. In the RAID 5 configuration shown, the drive DISK3 is shown holding data (compared with a RAID 4 where the drive DISK3 only holds parity). A D parity (i.e., a parity of the data block D) is stored in the disk DISK0. A C parity is stored on the DISK2. A B parity is shown stored on the disk DISK2. An A parity is shown stored on the disk DISK3.

RAID 4 and RAID 5 approaches use parity generation based on an XOR function. With RAID 4 and RAID 5, every stripe of data is used to generate parity. The parity generated is then stored in another dedicated drive or distributed across all the drives of the RAID group. RAID 4 and RAID 5 can tolerate only one drive failure at a time without losing data.

Referring to FIG. 3, a dedicated compressed data drive approach is shown. A number of drives DRIVE 1, DRIVE 2 and DRIVE 3 are shown. A drive DRIVE C is also shown. DRIVE 1, DRIVE 2 and DRIVE 3 store uncompressed data D0-D8. The drive DRIVE C is a dedicated drive to store the compressed version of the data D0-D8 as the data C-D0 through C-D8.

The performance of the dedicated compressed data drive method has drawbacks. A single dedicated drive DRIVE C for storing the compressed data of every RAID group. Every new write is split into multiple stripes. For each stripe, compressed data C-D0 to C-D8 is generated and stored in the dedicated drive DRIVE C. If there are n drives in the RAID group, then the compressed data of n−1 stripes are stored in the dedicated drive DRIVE C. Processing the n−1 stripes introduces delays in completing the writes of the compressed data and creates a bottleneck. A system configured to write both the data stripe and the compressed data will synchronously encounter delays because of the queued up writes on the compressed drive DRIVE C. The dedicated compressed data drive method also has fault-tolerance drawbacks. A failure of the dedicated compressed drive and another drive in the RAID group will result in data loss (logical drive failure).

Referring to FIG. 4, a distributed compressed data approach is shown. A number of drives DRIVE 1, DRIVE 2, DRIVE 3, DRIVE 4 are shown. Compressed data is distributed across the drives similar to the way parity is distributed in a RAID 5 approach. Each of the drives DRIVE 1-4 contains a compressed version of a stripe of data from each of the other three drives. The distributed compressed data approach provides better performance than the dedicated compressed data method. However, a failure of more than one drive in the distributed compressed data method will result in data loss.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention concerns an apparatus comprising a logically contiguous group of at least two drives, a loop and a compression/decompression circuit. Each of the drives comprises (i) a first region configured to store compressed data of a previous drive and (ii) a second region configured to store uncompressed data of the drive. The loop may be connected to the next drive in the logically contiguous group. The compression/decompression circuit may be configured to compress and decompress the data stored on each of the drives.

The objects, features and advantages of the present invention include providing a drive storage configuration that may (i) establish a level of redundancy and fault tolerance, (ii) be implemented without using parity, (iii) implement an ASIC for Compression/Decompression operations, (iv) use an existing redundant drive channel in a drive enclosure, (v) use drive ports already in use to store data, (vi) provide firmware to implement compression/decompression, (vii) implement firmware to store a mapping between the data blocks of each drive compared to the compressed data block stored in another drive and/or (viii) be cost effective to implement.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will be apparent from the following detailed description and the appended claims and drawings in which:

FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating a RAID 1 and RAID 10 approach;

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a RAID 4 and RAID 5 approach;

FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating a dedicated compressed data drive approach;

FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating a distributed compressed data approach;

FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating an example of a drive of the present invention;

FIG. 6 is a diagram illustrating a number of drives in a loop chained manner of compressed data RAID mechanism;

FIG. 7 is a diagram illustrating dedicated logic for compression/decompression operations;

FIG. 8 is a diagram illustrating a drive enclosure;

FIG. 9 is a diagram illustrating an example of data flow to the drives;

FIG. 10 is a diagram illustrating the present invention with 2 drive failures;

FIG. 11 is a diagram illustrating the distributed compressed data method with 2 drive failures; and

FIG. 12 is a diagram illustrating the dedicated compressed data drive method with 2 drive failures.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

Achieving a high level of redundancy with maximized storage efficiency and/or performance is a common goal in the modern world of growing data storage. The present invention may implement compression technology to compress a redundant copy of data in a RAID configuration. The redundant data may be distributed in a single chained manner. A logical loop may be implemented to achieve a high level of redundancy and/or performance in a RAID configuration without the need for parity and/or mirroring techniques. Using compression technology for redundancy provides additional redundancy, better fault tolerance, and/or improved performance. A set of drives may be grouped into a RAID group. The data content of each of the drives may be compressed and stored in another drive in the RAID group. A single chain logical organization may be implemented. A redundant port on the drives and a redundant drive channel in the drive enclosures may be used to provide logical organization.

In a scenario where 50% compression is achieved on the data, the present invention may increase the storage utilization by 33.33% as compared to a RAID 1 drive group. The storage efficiency of the present invention may be improved depending on the amount of compression applied to the data. For a compression greater than 50%, the storage efficiency of the present invention increases further and generally outperforms the storage efficiency of RAID 4 and/or RAID 5 without any compromise in fault tolerance.

An ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) may be implemented for compression and/or decompression operations to ensure a specified performance for storage subsystems. The use of a redundant drive port and/or redundant drive channels in the drive enclosure may ensure such a specified performance for the drives. The chained compression solution of the present invention may provide an improved fault-tolerance, redundancy and/or availability to a RAID system.

The RAID group of the present invention may include a collection of drives. An example block of data may be stored in a single drive. A compressed form of the example data from one drive may be stored in another drive in the same RAID group. The two drives may be referred to as “logically contiguous” drives. The need to use either parity and/or mirroring may be avoided by introducing compression. The compressed data of a particular drive may be stored in a drive in a chained manner. For example, a loop may be formed. A high level of redundancy, fault-tolerance and/or performance may be achieved.

Referring to FIG. 5, a drive 100 of the present invention is shown. The drive 100 generally comprises a region 102 and a region 104. The region 104 may be used to store uncompressed data. The region 102 may be used to store compressed data of one logically contiguous drive (e.g, the compressed data from the drive n−1).

The particular compression mechanism implemented may involve a one-to-one mapping of the actual contents of the drive 100 (to be described in more detail in connection with FIG. 6). For example, a compressed version of the data of one drive may be stored on a logically contiguous drive. Mapping information may be maintained by firmware embedded on a storage array controller. The mapping information may be used to reconstruct the data of the drive in the event of a drive failure and/or error correction by decompressing the compressed data block from a logically contiguous drive. When replacing the failed drive with a new replacement drive, the data of the failed drive may be reconstructed in the new drive by decompressing the compressed data block from a logically contiguous drive. The mapping information may be implemented by the controller firmware embedded on each of the redundant storage array controllers (to be described in more detail in connection with FIG. 7).

Referring to FIG. 6, a block diagram of a drive system (or configuration) 150 is shown. The system 150 generally comprises a number of drives 100 a-100 n. The particular number of drives implemented may be varied to meet the design criteria of a particular implementation. Each of the drives 100 a-100 n may have a data section (e.g., D1-D5) and a compression section (e.g., C1-C5). For example, the drive 100 a may have a data section configured to store uncompressed data D1. A compressed form of the data blocks D1 may be stored in a logically contiguous drive as data C1. For example, the compressed data C1 may be stored in the drive 100 b. The drives 100 a-100 n may form a loop 160 a-160 n. The loop 160 a-160 n may form a logically chained loop. In general, the loop 160 a-160 n may be implemented as a number of logical connections between the drives 100 a-100 n. For example, a portion 160 a may logically connect the data D1 of the drive 100 a to the compressed data C1 of the drive 100 b. The loop 160 a-160 n is shown in a generally left to right manner. However, the loop 160 a-160 n may be implemented in a generally right to left manner. For example, the portion 160 d may logically connect the data D5 of the drive 100 n to the compressed data C5 of the drive 100 d. The particular arrangement of the loop 160 a-160 n may be varied to meet the design criteria of a particular implementation.

In the example shown, the drive 100 b may store data D2. A compressed version of the data D2 may be stored on the drive 100 c as the data C2, accessible through a portion 160 b of the logical loop 160 a-160 n. Similarly, the data D1 of drive 100 a may have a compressed version of the data D1 stored as the data C1 on the drive 100 b. The compressed data C5 of the drive 100 n may be stored in the drive 100 a. In general, any two of the drives 100 a-100 n may form a logically contiguous group. In one example, the drives 100 b and 100 c may be a logically contiguous group. A logically contiguous group may be formed by drives that are not shown adjacent to each other. The data D3 of the drive 100 c is shown stored in the drive 100 d as compressed data C3.

Referring to FIG. 7, a diagram of a storage subsystem 200 is shown. The subsystem 200 generally comprises a number of blocks (or circuits) 202 a-202 b. The circuits 202 a-202 b may each be implemented as compression/decompression circuits. A mid-plane 204 may be implemented between the circuit 202 a and the circuit 202 b. The compression circuit 202 a generally comprises a block (or circuit) 210, a block (or circuit) 212, a block (or circuit) 214 and a block (or circuit) 216. The circuit 210 may be implemented as a host interface. The circuit 212 may be implemented as a processor along with a data cache. The circuit 214 may be implemented as a compression/decompression engine. The circuit 216 may be implemented as a drive interface. The circuit 212 generally comprises a cache circuit 218 and a processor circuit 220. The host interface 210 may have an input 230 that may receive a signal (e.g., DATA). The signal DATA generally represents one or more data blocks (or packets) representing the data D1-D5 described in FIG. 5. The host interface may have an output 232 that may present the signal DATA to an input 234 of the circuit 212. The circuit 212 may have an output 236 that may present the signal DATA to an input 238 of the circuit 214. The circuit 212 may also have an output 240 that may present the signal DATA to the input 242 of the circuit 216. The circuit 214 may have an output 244 that may present a signal (e.g., C_DATA) to an input 246 of the circuit 216. The signal C_DATA may be a compressed version of the signal DATA. The signal C_DATA generally represents one or more data blocks (or packets) representing the compressed data C1-C5 described in FIG. 5. The circuit 202 b may have a similar implementation. The circuit 214 may provide a dedicated logic to implement the compression and/or decompression operations.

The logic of the circuit 202 a and/or circuit 202 b may be either embedded in the code running as a part of the controller firmware along with code for the RAID engine, or may be offloaded to an ASIC controlled and operated by the controller firmware code. Offloading the code may increase the performance at the cost of additional circuitry. The particular type of compression/decompression implemented by the circuit 214 may be varied to meet the design criteria of a particular implementation. The circuit 202 a and/or the circuit 202 b may be used for redundancy, fault tolerance and/or RAID group failover mechanisms.

Referring to FIG. 8, a drive enclosure 300 is shown. The drive enclosure 300 is shown including a number of the drives 100 a-100 n. Each of the drives 100 a-100 n is shown having a port (e.g., P1) and another port (e.g., P2). The enclosure generally comprises a circuit 302, a circuit 304, a mid-plane 204, a circuit 308, and a circuit 310. The circuit 302 may be implemented as a primary ESM. The circuit 308 may be implemented as a alternate ESM. One of the ports P1 and P2 of each of the drives 100 a-100 n may be a primary port. One of the other ports P1 and P2 of each of the drives 100 a-100 n may be a secondary port. The I/O paths of the uncompressed data D1-D5 and the compressed data C1-C5 onto the drives may be kept separate. Both the uncompressed data D1-D5 and the compressed data C1-C5 are handled by the same controller. The drives 100 a-100 n may be implemented as dual port drives to implement redundancy (e.g., to store and the retrieve compressed data C1-C5 on the drives 100 a-100 n). The SOC 304 (or 310) may be resident in an ESM 302 (or 308) and may perform the switching/routing of data onto the drives 100 a-100 n. The mid plane 204 on the drive enclosure 300 may be used to send compressed data to the redundant ESM 302 (or 308) of the drive enclosure 300. The mid plane 204 may also be used to send compressed data to a drive 100 a-100 n using the secondary port P2.

The compressed data C_DATA of the signal DATA may be routed over the mid-plane circuit 204 in the drive enclosure 300 onto the alternate ESM 308 keeping the data D1-D5 with the same ESM. For a RAID logical drive owned by the controller 202 a, the primary port P1 of each of the drives 100 a-100 n may be used to transfer uncompressed data over the primary channel handled by the ESM 302. The secondary port P2 of each of the drives 100 a-100 n may be used to transfer compressed data over the secondary channel handled by ESM 308. For a RAID logical drive 100 a-100 n owned by the controller 202 b, the port P2 may be used as a primary port to transfer uncompressed data over the primary channel handled by the ESM B 308. The port P1 may be used as a secondary port to transfer compressed data over the secondary channel handled by the ESM 302.

A RAID group implemented using the present invention may have the actual (uncompressed) data D1-Dn stored in one of the drives 100 a-100 n and compressed data C1-Cn stored in two other logically contiguous drives 100 a-100 n. On arrival of each data segment from a host, the data D1-D5 is split into multiple stripes to be sent to the drive interface 216. Parallel to this process, the striped data is compressed by the compression engine sent to the drive interface. The actual data D1-Dn along with the compressed data C1-Cn is sent to the drive enclosure 300.

Referring to FIG. 9, an example of data flow to the drives 100 a-100 n is shown. Data may be sent on a data channel 320. Each of the drives 100 a-100 n may receive data on the primary port P1 from the data channel 320. The data from the data channel 320 may be compressed by the compression/decompression engine 214. Each of the drives 100 a-100 n may receive compressed data on the secondary port P2 from the compression/decompression engine 214. This ensures that the RAID group works with any number of drives 100 a-100 n without loss of drive performance. The present invention normally provides a fault-tolerance of n/2 drives, where n is the total number of drives in the RAID group provided that there are not logically contiguous drive failures.

Using 50% data compression with the present invention will ensure greater storage efficiency and greater performance compared to a RAID 1 implementation. Consider a 2 drive example. If each of the drives 100 a-100 n has a capacity C GB, then the maximum space occupied with a RAID 1 is C GB. However, with the present invention, the data region in each of the drives 100 a-100 n occupies 0.666 C GB and the compression region occupy 0.333 C GB (50% compression). In 2 drives, the total capacity of actual data that the RAID group stores is approximately 1.33 C GB. The performance is greater since the drives 100 a-100 n may be accessed like a RAID 0 group with data striped across both the drives. Therefore, the present invention may provide a performance greater than RAID 1 with a compression equal to or greater than 50%. However, by implementing compression greater than 50%, the storage capacity efficiency of the drives 1001-100 n may be further improved.

The present invention is generally more fault tolerant than the RAID 3 and RAID 5 implementations since the present invention may continue to operate without data loss if more than 1 drives fail (up to n/2 drives provided no logically contiguous drives fail). Additional fault tolerance may be implemented compared with RAID 3 and RAID 5 groups. In the case of the RAID 3 and RAID 5 groups, whenever a modify operation is implemented on the group, all the drives need to be read to recalculate the parity and update the parity along with the modified data. With the present invention, for every modify operation, the data is striped and written to the respective drives 100 a-100 n. The compression of the stripes are then independently generated and written onto the logically contiguous drives in the RAID group. Fewer reads and/or updates are needed compared with the parity generation methods.

Referring to FIG. 10, a diagram illustrating the drive system 150 with 2 drive failures is shown. The drive system 150 may handle a multiple drive loss scenario, so long as all of the drives that fail are non-contiguous. The drive 100 a and the drive 100 c are marked with an X to show drive failures. Even with two drives failing, all the data will continue to be available. The following TABLE 1 describes the state of each drive and the data availability:

TABLE 1 Drive State Data Availability 1 Failed Through C1 in Drive 2 2 Optimal Through D2 3 Failed Through C3 in Drive 4 4 Optimal Through D4 5 Optimal Through D5

Referring to FIG. 11, a diagram illustrating the distributed compressed data method with 2 drive failures is shown. Failure of any 2 drives using the distributed compressed data method results in data loss. DRIVE 2 and DRIVE 4 are marked with an X to show drive failures. As a result, data D1 and D8 are lost.

Referring to FIG. 12, a diagram illustrating the dedicated compressed data method with 2 drive failures is shown. Failure of the dedicated drive and any other drive in the RAID system using the dedicated compressed data method results in data loss. DRIVE 2 and the dedicated drive DRIVE 4 are marked with an X to show drive failures. As a result, data blocks D1, D4 and D7 are lost.

The present invention provides a better tradeoff between performance as well as a higher level of redundancy and fault-tolerance compared to the distributed compressed data method and dedicated compressed data method.

While the invention has been particularly shown and described with reference to the preferred embodiments thereof, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes in form and details may be made without departing from the scope of the invention. 

1. An apparatus comprising: a logically contiguous group of at least two drives, wherein each of the drives comprises (i) a first region configured to store compressed data of a previous drive and (ii) a second region configured to store uncompressed data of said drive, (iii) a first port configured to transfer said uncompressed data to a drive controller, and (iv) a second port configured to transfer said compressed data between said drives; a loop connected to a next drive of said logically contiguous group; and a compression/decompression circuit configured to compress and decompress the compressed and uncompressed data stored on each of said drives prior to transferring said compressed data through said second port, wherein said uncompressed data for one of said drives is stored as said compressed data on at least one other of said drives.
 2. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said second region of one of said drives in said logically contiguous group is connected to said first region of said next drive.
 3. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein a portion of said loop connects said second region of one of said drives to said first region of said next drive.
 4. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein compressed data of said first region of one of said drives is accessible through a portion of said loop.
 5. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein mapping information is maintained by firmware (i) embedded on a storage array controller and (ii) used to reconstruct data of the drive in the event of a drive failure and/or error correction.
 6. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the dedicated logic of said compression/decompression circuit is embedded in a controller firmware RAID engine code.
 7. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the dedicated logic of said compression/decompression circuit is transferred to an ASIC peripheral device.
 8. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein each of said drives comprises a drive port used to store and retrieve compressed data.
 9. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein each of said drives comprises a redundant drive channel used in a drive enclosure.
 10. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said apparatus establishes redundancy and fault tolerance without using parity.
 11. The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said apparatus provides fault tolerance up to n/2 drive failures, where n is the number of drives.
 12. An apparatus comprising: means for implementing a logically contiguous group of at least two drives, wherein each of the drives comprises (i) a first region configured to store compressed data of a previous drive and (ii) a second region configured to store uncompressed data of said drive, (iii) a first port configured to transfer said uncompressed data to a drive controller, and (iv) a second port configured to transfer said compressed data between said drives; means for implementing a loop connected to a next drive of said logically contiguous group; and means for implementing a compression/decompression circuit configured to compress and decompress the compressed and uncompressed data stored on each of said drives prior to transferring said compressed data through said second port, wherein said uncompressed data for one of said drives is stored as said compressed data on at least one other of said drives.
 13. The apparatus according to claim 12, wherein said apparatus establishes redundancy and fault tolerance without using parity.
 14. The apparatus according to claim 12, wherein said apparatus provides fault tolerance up to n/2 drive failures, where n is the number of drives.
 15. A method for implementing fault tolerance in a drive array comprising the steps of: (A) implementing a logically contiguous group of at least two drives, wherein each of the drives comprises (i) a first region configured to store compressed data of a previous drive and (ii) a second region configured to store uncompressed data of said drive, (iii) a first port configured to transfer said uncompressed data to a drive controller, and (iv) a second port configured to transfer said compressed data between said drives; (B) implementing a loop connected to a next drive of said logically contiguous group; and (C) implementing a compression/decompression circuit configured to compress and decompress the compressed and uncompressed data stored on each of said drives prior to transferring said compressed data through said second port, wherein said uncompressed data for one of said drives is stored as said compressed data on at least one other of said drives.
 16. The method according to claim 15, wherein said method establishes redundancy and fault tolerance without using parity.
 17. The method according to claim 15, wherein said apparatus provides fault tolerance up to n/2 drive failures, where n is the number of drives in the array. 